First isolation of human gastric juice. Stevens was also the first successfully to perform an in vitro digestion, proving the presence in the gastric juice of the active principle necessary for the assimilation of food. An English translation is included in Spallanzani’s Dissertations relative to the natural history of animals, 1784, vol. 1, pp. 303-16. Digital facsimile of the 1777 edition from Google Books at this liink.  See also Edward Stevens: Gastric physiologist, phyhsician and American statesman. With a complete translation of his inaugural dissertation De alimentorum concoctione...Edited by Stacey B. Day. Montreal, 1969.

From the Wikipedia article on Edward Stevens, accessed 01-2017:

"Stevens was born in St. Croix in the Virgin Islands. Stevens's father, the merchant Thomas Stevens,^[1] would also become the adoptive father of an orphaned Alexander Hamilton.^[2] According to Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton,^[3]people would often say that Edward Stevens and Hamilton looked like brothers. Secretary of State Timothy Pickering, who knew both men in adulthood, noted that the men were strikingly similar in appearance and concluded that they must be brothers. Ron Chernow says many aspects of Hamilton's biography make more sense given Stevens's paternity. It would explain why Hamilton was adopted into the Stevens family while his brother, James, was not. It may have also been a factor in Hamilton's supposed father abandoning his family.^[4]"